Learn to Look Outwards

This might come across as totally out of the blue, but trust me, it is not. If you are the maybe 15% that this doesn’t apply to, then fantastic, move on and keep going like you are – for the rest of you, I encourage you to listen up, and heed the words – if not specifically applicable, then generally.

It is utterly pathetic how people, both men and women weep for fictional characters that never existed and never will exist. There are many things that can touch our souls, but when we allow our emotions to be manipulated and influenced by decent playacting on a screen, we are losing a part of our true humanity. We are exchanging the capacity to truly care about others for a fictional sob story, likely written only to control and ensnare our minds, while simultaneously making our wallets a bit lighter.

If we will weep, let it be for the real people that are truly suffering or not at all. Men, women, and children are suffering and dying right now, this very moment all over the world. Those who have no one. Who die alone. Those who die such terrible deaths from war, torture, gang-rape, murder, hunger, disease… these are the ones who deserve your tears, and hopefully your action.

Amazing how we can cry ourselves to sleep about some character in a Netflix series, and then get up the next day and turn to our neighbor that has terminal cancer and treat them like garbage. Then they die one day, and we’re so surprised they never told us. Really? We care more about figments of our imaginations than we do the truly wounded and broken people all around us. Just because someone may have a lot of money, a nice car, or wear a smile on their face does not at all mean they aren’t hurting.

How about we stop caring about our imaginary friends known as actors, and start caring about the real people in our lives. Fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, friends, and even the coworkers that irritate us so badly…

There are people who need you all around. If you could stop thinking about yourself for one second, you might just notice the tears that everyone around you is hiding. And if you do choose to try to reach out to them and help them – you might just discover that the emptiness that has been eating away at your insides for years, doesn’t quite hurt so much anymore.

When you turn your eyes outwards instead of inwards – when you look to soothe the pain of others instead of constantly demanding the attention of everyone around you to make them feel bad for you, and listen to all your whining – when you can truly learn to care about others more than yourself, you might finally awake to discover that you just don’t have time to be depressed anymore because you have a purpose again. Others need your help.